Manzara İstanbul who’s been promising its foreign guests visiting İstanbul to savor the city just like a local does for eight years, as part of the Manzara Perspectives project hosts several art people in order to build a bridge between İstanbul and European cities, providing an opportunity for local and foreign artists to live, produce and present in İstanbul.

Past September, Manzara İstanbul hosted Korpys/Löffler and Christian Hake from Bremen with their exhibition called ‘Transit’ as part of the celebrations for the 50th year anniversary of the Turkish labourer immigration to Germany. And now Manzara Perspectives is launching on the 4th floor of Suriye Pasajı a solo show ‘Survivors by Hanging’ of the German artist Valker März, popular with his idiosynchatic style of sculpture installations.

Marz have productions in different disciplines of art such as sculpture, painting, photography, film and performance. He published lots of artist books and participated in collective exhibitions in various galleries including Kunstverain Mannhaim, Martin Grophius Bau Berlin, Neuer Berliner Kunsverain.

Art-lovers in İstanbul had a chance to be closely acquainted with him in Contemporary İstanbul Art Fair in 2009 and 2011. In the previous year he secured his position in İstanbul with a striking installation named ‘Typhoon’ in the stand of The Tammen and Partner Gallery. His works are part of personal and institutional collections İstanbul.

He dedicated his works to the various European authors and philosophers as well as Friedrich Nietzche, Giordano Bruno, Martin Heidegger, Bernd Heinrich, Wilhelm von Kleist, Marquis de Sade, Walter Benjamin, Geoges Bataille, Peter Sloterdijk, Rolf Dieter, Brinkmann and Hannah Arendth. März establishes immaginative scenarios where important figures of the art scene such as Joseph Beuys, Pina Baush and Fransz Kafka engage in dialogues amongst themselves and through their dialogues and with references from history he critisizes ironically and amusingly the state of humanity in modern times.

With his work realized for the exhibition in Berlin “Hannah Arendt Thinking Space”, “Auschwitz is Human”, he underlines Hannah Arendt’s thought about the banality/mediocrity of the evil.

With “Survivors by Hanging” the artist describes the ‘escape’ which is the manifestation of the everyday life in between and on strings… preference or obligation? as a stunter, as a citizen, as a human.

By the artist’s own words:

“We all are survivors by hanging … it´s our daily work … to ignore the disaster of gravity – the dictatorship of money-gold … and time … the strings we were hanging on to forget the pain, the trouble … this strings are made out of love, humor and longings. We all know, that it is hard not to fall down in the ocean of destruction .. so we keep on hanging and smile .. for a while … Nearly 100 small sized figures, made out of fired clay, hanging on strings, together in a mobile – hanging on the walls .. telling this story… it is our story and the storyteller is Volker März.”

The exhibition will be opened by a reading by Gülsel Ceren Güneş from her first book “Karakalem” and will be open to visitors between 22-27 November, in Suriye Pasajı, 4th floor.